Portal:Museums

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The Museums Portal

A museum (/mjuːˈzəm/ mew-ZEE-əm) is an institution dedicated to displaying and/or preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers and specialists. Compared to a library, a museum hosts a much wider range of objects and usually focus around a specific theme such as the arts, science, natural history, local history, and other topics. Public museums that host exhibitions and interactive demonstrations are often considered to be tourist attractions, and many museums attract large numbers of visitors from outside their host country, with the most visited museums in the world regularly attracting millions of visitors annually.

Since the establishment of the earliest known museum in ancient times, museums have been associated with academia and the preservation of rare items. Museums originated as private collections of interesting items, and not until much later did the emphasis on educating the public take root. (Full article...)

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Location of the museum in Toronto

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year, making it the most-visited museum in Canada. It is north of Queen's Park, in the University of Toronto district, with its main entrance on Bloor Street West. Museum subway station is named after it and, since a 2008 renovation, is decorated to resemble the ROM's collection at the platform level.

Established on April 16, 1912, and opened on March 19, 1914, the ROM has maintained close relations with the University of Toronto throughout its history, often sharing expertise and resources. It was under direct control and management of the University of Toronto until 1968, when it became an independent Crown agency of the Government of Ontario. It is Canada's largest field-research institution, with research and conservation activities worldwide.

With more than 13 million items and 40 galleries, the museum's diverse collections of world culture and natural history contribute to its international reputation. It contains a collection of dinosaurs, minerals and meteorites; Canadian and European historical artifacts; as well as African, Near Eastern, and East Asian art. It houses the world's largest collection of fossils from the Burgess Shale in British Columbia with more than 150,000 specimens. The museum also contains an extensive collection of design and fine art, including clothing, interior, and product design, especially Art Deco. (Full article...)

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Children during a museum lesson at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1960

Museum education is a specialized field devoted to developing and strengthening the education role of informal education spaces and institutions such as museums.

In a critical report called Excellence and Equity published in 1992 by the American Association of Museums, the educational role of museums was identified as the core to museums' service to the public. As museum education has developed as a field of study and interest in its own right, efforts have been made to record its history and to establish a research agenda to strengthen its position as a discipline in the wider work of museums. (Full article...)

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For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Museums-related articles, see WikiProject Museums.

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Museo Castillo Serralles is an agricultural museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, that showcases the sugar cane and its derivative rum industry

An agricultural museum is a museum dedicated to preserving agricultural history and heritage. It aims to educate the public on the subject of agricultural history, their legacy and impact on society. To accomplish this, it specializes in the display and interpretation of artifacts related to agriculture, often of a specific time period or in a specific region. They may also display memorabilia related to farmers or businesspeople who impacted society via agriculture (for example, size of the land cultivated as compared to other farmers) or agricultural advances (for example, technology implementation).

An agricultural museum is said to be diachronic if it presents the entire narrative associated with subject of agriculture within its walls, or to be synchronic if it limits its displays to a single experience. (Full article...)

In the news

31 May 2024 – Israel–Hamas war protests
Pro-Palestinian protesters occupy parts of the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, New York, U.S. (Reuters)
12 May 2024 –
Forty-nine Vatican Museums employees start an unprecedented labor dispute over unfair and poor working conditions against the Vatican's Pontifical Commission. (Reuters)
6 May 2024 –
The 2024 Met Gala takes place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with the theme "The Garden of Time", celebrating the Met's exhibit Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. (Vanity Fair)

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